Fic: Loadstone North – 1

Title: Loadstone North
Author: bearfacedcheek

Summary: Post NFA, Buffy travels to LA for a shanshued Angel and finds more than she expected.

 

Part 1: Good Life Interuptus

The Shanshu was Angel’s of course. Truth be told, he’d never really believed otherwise, wasn’t actually sure he’d ever really wanted it anyway. Even beating Angel to a pulp over a cup of Mountain Dew had been as much about pissing on Angel’s parade as winning the prize. No, it was Angel’s by right and he was fine with that; the bastard deserved it anyway.

It had happened right after the battle with the senior partners. He closes his eyes tight against the images of that night: of Gunn bleeding his life away on the filthy ground determined to take down as many as he could before he fell, of Illyria self destructing with an anguished cry of Wesley’s name. He’d never have expected it of her, likes to think that maybe it was a bit of Fred that guided her to that incredible self-sacrifice.

He remembers how it was just the two of them in the end, back to back amongst the horror, finishing off the demons Illyria’s awesome light show had missed. Fists and fangs and each other, that’s all they’d had. That and the scent of an impossible victory driving them on.

Angel had died with the last demon–he’d felt it go through him, a deep visceral knowledge flowing down through blood and history. Died, but didn’t, because his familiar form remained collapsed against the blood-soaked brickwork. He’d carried his sire fireman style back to the Hyperian, laid him down on a musty bed and watched the fever come.

Who’d have thought a reward could be so damn painful? Angel’s screams had resonated through the hotel while his long-dead carcass burned with the fire of restored life. And he’d stayed, because he’d given up pretending he didn’t give a rat’s arse about Angel, and the old sod needed him more than anyone had ever needed him before.

So, yeah, he’d stayed. Spent long, thirsty days and nights at his bedside trying to calm the fever with wet rags and icy glasses of water. “I’m here,” he’d told Angel when he’d called out for him in the night. “Hang in there, gramps; it’ll be all right.”

No, he didn’t envy Angel his just reward in the slightest; it was the inevitable “gift with purchase” that cut soul deep.

“She coming then?” Angel looks up at the hollow sound of Spike’s voice and offers an awkward nod.

“Say’s she’ll be here Friday night.” His eyes flick again to the printed out email in his hand, then up, skirting over Spike’s face uncomfortably.

“Don’t worry, pops.” If he can just keep enough sarcasm in his voice, maybe he can hide the depth of his pain from Angel. Of course she’s coming; with Angel miraculously turned human, where else would she be? “I’ll be long gone.”

The look of relief that washes over his grandsire’s face makes him snort with wry laughter. “Like I’d want to stick around for that,” he thinks with a bitter almost-humour that tastes too much like sour milk.

***

She just can’t wait. Angel is human, his cosmic reward for all the good he’s done, for all he’s suffered. The need to be with him is an all-consuming fire in her heart, years of fruitless love bursting out from her chest so that she can barely contain herself. Her flight is less than forty-eight hours away and it’s still an eternity too long.

“Buffy, sit down.” Dawn looks vaguely amused by her excited pacing. “You’ll wear out the carpet and we won’t get our deposit back.”

“Sorry.” She pauses for a moment to make the distracted apology before wringing her hands and setting off again.

“Hang on.” Dawn’s fingers glide adeptly over the keyboard of her new laptop. “Here.” She spins the screen to show her sister. “If you take the train to Pisa in an hour, you can catch the eleven forty connection to Paris and be in LA twelve hours sooner.”

“Eeek!” Her excited cry comes with a slayer-strength hug that makes Dawn gasp and pound on her back feebly. “Sorry. Oh, that’s so great! I can surprise him!”

***

“Where will you go?” Angel’s feeling guilty, he can tell, and the old Spike would certainly have milked that one for all it was worth, but right now he can’t be bothered; anyway, any reference to Buffy would hurt him a hundred times more than it’ll hurt his grandsire.

He shrugs one shoulder negligently and takes a drag off his cigarette-maybe he can at least pollute the old bastard’s lungs a bit before he goes. “Big world. Probably go out and do some Championing, see what this whole soul thing’s really about.”

“That sounds…” but he cuts off at the sudden expression of alarm on the vampire’s face.

“She’s here.” There’s something tinged with panic in Spike’s voice and his eyes search the room for some kind of escape at the sound of her heels clicking across the lobby. There’s no way out and Spike gives him a quick look that begs his silence before melting back into the shadowed corner of the room, all demonic stealth and silence.

“Angel!” She bursts in and she’s bursting with happiness. Her beautiful face is alight with joy and then she’s running, crossing the few short strides between them so that she’s in his arms, small and strong and buzzing with love.

“Buffy.” And for just a second he forgets about Spike, doesn’t even see him over Buffy’s shoulder as he edges towards the open door and escape. Then she goes rigid in his arms, every muscles suddenly tensing in recognition, and he can’t pretend any longer that there’ll be no casualties in his happy ever after.

She pulls away enough to look at him with wide doubtful eyes that hold accusation and fear. He nods because she’s asking so much. Do my senses tell me the truth? Is it him? Did you lie to me?

“Hello, Buffy.” Spike’s voice is softer and more uncertain than Angel has heard it in all the time since he came back, and his face is closed and wary as she turns to face him with already watery eyes.

He might not be a vampire anymore, might only have the cloudy perception of an ordinary man, but even Angel can feel the static in the air shoot up a million volts. It’s a petty thought, he knows, with Spike’s heart broken all across his face and Buffy’s eyes wide and troubled and her expression suddenly wan, but he can’t help cursing them both for spoiling the beginning of his fairytale.

“Spike.” She says his name softly enough for it to sound intimate and he responds in kind.

“Slayer.”

“What the hell?” Her eyes flash with a sudden and tangible anger, and Angel doesn’t remember her being so changeable.

“He came back; he’s been helping.” Angel does know he has a debt, remembers coming in and out of consciousness to cool hands and comforting words and when the pain of rebirth had blazed white-hot agony through his body, he’d clung to Spike, and give the son-of-a-bitch his dues, Spike had stuck by him. “He helped me after the battle, when I Shashued.”

“How long?” She addresses the granite-hard question to Spike, hasn’t taken her wrath-filled eyes off him for even a second since she first laid them gently on him.

“Year.” Spike’s clipped response is all about self-preservation, and it strikes Angel that there must have been more to their torrid affair than he ever guessed if it has left them both so wary.

“Bastard!” And she’s on him like a wild cat with all her slayer grace and training abandoned to her rage, so that all there is is the windmilling of her fists, her scratching nails and a curse far too crass for her lips. “Fucking bastard.”

He throws her off with a growl and Angel catches her trembling body, holding her back and gently commanding her to stop. She doesn’t take her eyes off the vampire as she shrugs sharply out of Angel’s grip.

“Spike.” She tilts her head to the other room and they disappear, leaving him feeling forgotten in the office. Wasn’t this his day—their moment, his and Buffy’s? He curses Spike for being here, and Buffy, too, for coming early, and he waits for them to finish the spat he can hear escalating through the thin stud wall.

***

“Oh, this is just peachy, isn’t it?” she spits. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“No.” He drawls it out like she’s an idiot, and delights at the violence flashing on her face. “Was gonna bugger off before you got here. Not that interested in seeing you and Broodimus Maximus in there getting cuddly.”

“And yet here you are?” she snaps, feeling perverse and righteous all at once.

“Not my sodding fault you’re so horny to see him you couldn’t wait a day to come and give him those delicious panties of yours is it?”

“Ugh!” Sshe throws up her hands. “You don’t change, do you? You’re still such a pig.”

“And you’re still a stuck up, self-centred bitch. Did I spoil your chuffing reunion, slayer?” he asks with a nasty gleam in his eye. “You figured by now you should be making sweet, sweet love on the sodding floor. Well, don’t let me stop you, pet. I’m not hanging around.”

“Good.” And she wants so much to hurt him then. Wants to roll a year’s worth of grief and sorrow into a tight hard ball and hurl it at him just to make them even. “I’m sure there’s plenty of opportunities out there for cowardly, deceitful vampires.”

“Well, the world is full of slayers; might take up the old hobby again.” He leers and he’s so like the old Spike that she can’t help but be the old Buffy.

“Killing them or screwing them?” She steps in and he matches her movements.

“I was thinking both.”

“You’re disgusting.” Tit for tat. It’s pointless and stupid and she hates herself for getting sucked into it.

“Yeah, and I’m going.” Another step each and he’s right up in her face, sneering out his contempt.

“Good.” She holds his eyes like a challenge and breathes hard and angry over his face.

“Right,” he grinds out with clenched jaw and narrowed eyes. “See you around, Slayer.”

“I sincerely hope not.”

“Right.” And then he’s gone, and she’s too shell shocked to even move. She should go back to Angel, but she’s still got their venomous exchange running repeat in her head and she’s too angry, too regretful, to face her love right now.

“Buffy,” he calls eventually, and it takes a monumental feat of self-control to quiet the voices in her head—Spike’s and her own—enough to turn to him and smile.

***

It’s an accident of chance and nothing more that has her and Angel in Cleveland on the night he and Faith roar into town on their mismatched pair of jet-black motorcycles.

Angel’s work had sent him north—just a year and he’s rising quickly through the ranks of the LA advertising agency he’d joined soon after becoming human—and she’d wanted to check in with Giles and the others. So they’d decided to make a real trip of it and a couple of weeks back in the swing of slaying had sounded like fun.

So she’d been taking a guided tour of slayer central with Willow and giggling like the school girls they used to be over the latest gossip from each other’s lives when they’d arrived: Spike on his steel and chrome classic spraying up gravel as he skidded dramatically to a halt in the courtyard, and Faith slipping off her sleeker, faster, ride wearing leather and sex appeal like armour.

“Brelrog,” Spike addresses Giles without greeting or preamble, or a second glance in her direction, as Faith glides to his side shaking out her hair so it falls in waist-length waves around her body. “Been tracking them for weeks. Looks like they’re breeding.”

“Here?” Giles looks immediately alarmed.

“Where else?” Faith’s hand delves into the pocket of Spike’s jacket to retrieve a battered pack of cigarettes in a gesture so familiar and intimate that Buffy can barely contain the sly comment that lurks behind her lips.

“Come in, then, both of you.” Giles waves his arm in invitation and the discussion moves to the library on the second floor.

“So what’s the sitch with these bell-dogs?” Buffy asks as soon as they’re all seated. “A dozen slayers with real big swords should do the trick, right?”

“Brel-rog.” Spike’s eyes find hers for the first time as he corrects her with an infuriatingly smug grin. “Best keep the slayer away from this one, watcher, or we’ll be overrun.”

She’s about to rise to the challenge in his eyes when Giles calmly interrupts. “Cutting a Brelrog demon would be a grave mistake, Buffy. Breaking through the flesh triggers the demon to instantaneously replicate itself.”

“Like when you cut a worm in half and you get two worms?” Willow asks with a doubtful frown.

“Well, not exactly; the process is quite different,” he explains, and she can see the beginnings of watcher geek excitement sparking in his eyes. “The mathematics however is the same.”

And even Buffy can do that kind of maths. “No cutty,” she affirms with a smile for her watcher. “Check. So how do we kill them?” She glances at Spike expectantly.

“If we knew that we’d have bloody well killed them by now, wouldn’t we?” He gives her a look that plainly says she’s an idiot before catching Faith’s wry eyes with a conspiratorial smirk.

“Well, you two have had weeks to work it out.” She’s not going to let them bait her on what she suddenly decides is her own turf. “If you think you’re just gonna offload this on us…”

“Slayer,” he cuts in, but Faith silences him with a wicked closed-lipped smile and a shake of her head.

She laughs that husky sex-in-a-bottle-of-whiskey laugh of hers and runs her hand possessively down the vampire’s arm. “No worries, lover.” She watches Buffy’s eyes as she talks, and her expression speaks of malicious mischief. “If they don’t wanna play, it’s just all the more for us.”

“Of course we will offer you all the assistance we can.” Giles breaks in with the assurance. “I’ll research the Brelrog demon’s further and we’ll brief the slayers in the morning” he smiles magnanimously at the pair but his eyes are wary. “We are of course grateful that you brought this to our attention and any help you can provide…”

“Sure thing, watcher.” Spike pauses to listen to something Faith whispers in his ear. “Listen, we’ve been on the road for a while; got anyplace we can bunk down?”

“Sure.” Willow’s smile is disturbingly genuine. “It’s great to see both of you. It’s like the whole gang’s getting together.” Spike and Buffy give her matching incredulous looks that she doesn’t seem to notice as she ploughs on. “So how long have you guys been together? Er, I mean travelling together.”

“Ten months,” Faith purrs as she hauls the vampire to his feet and slips her arm through his. “Come on, bad boy. I wanna kill something before bed.”

***

“Why does it bother you so much?” Angel looks up from his paperwork and she stops mid-rant to glare at him.

“Because it’s Spike,” she enunciates as if he really should have already recognised the logic of that argument. “You didn’t hear him, Angel. He had his annoy-blaster turned up to full. And Faith was no better.”

“How come they’re travelling together anyway?”

“I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. But she was all over him like a rash. I’d forgotten what an uber-slut she is.”

“Buffy.” He sounds tired and a little exasperated, and she turns to look at him in slight surprise. “I’ve got a ton of stuff to get done by the morning. Can we just forget about Spike for tonight?”

“Fine.” Even when she falls silent she’s distracting him. He can see her tapping foot out of the corner of his eye and almost hear the rant continuing in her head.

“Buf.” She turns to the sound of his voice, her pretty face pinched with annoyance. “Will you go out and kill something? You’re driving me crazy.”

She lets out a burst of embarrassed laughter and covers her face with both hands. “Sorry.” She peeks out at him sheepishly from between her fingers and he raises an arm in invitation for her to slip to his side.

“Hmm.” She snuggles against him and he’s big and warm just like the incomparable love she feels for him. But she’s still antsy as she watches him flick one handed through his paperwork.

He’s quite the success. Has taken to human life again like a duck to water. It’s been promotions and squash and company dinners since the day he walked effortlessly into the first high-paying job he applied for.

His other life—his vampire life—seems worlds away now and he doesn’t have much to do with the odd bits of slaying she sometimes indulges in.  “It’s not my world anymore,” he told her once. “Just like the office isn’t yours. But it’s good, isn’t it? To have our own things.” He was right; she felt how much stronger it made them that they always came back to each other at the end of the day, a little closer than when they’d parted that morning.

“Ok.” She gets up and flashes him a brilliant smile. “Since I can’t kill the bleached pain in my ass, I’ll go take it out on something else. Don’t wait up.”

***

“So why’d you do it?” Faith turns at the sound of his voice, momentarily distracted from scanning the cemetery.

“Why’d I do what?”

“You know bloody what!” he snaps back, annoyed. Being this close to the Slayer and Angel is getting under his skin and making him prickly. “Tell everyone we’d been knocking about together that long?”

She gives him a teasing, sultry look and smirks. “Because I’m your fairy fucking god mother.” And with that cryptic answer she’s off on the tail of the two fledglings that just broke cover from a nearby tomb.

“Mine.” She calls dibs on the larger vampire when the pair hare off in different directions and he’s soon pounding through the graveyard after his quarry.

The kid must have been a runner before he got turned because Spike can barely keep pace with him as they weave through the tombs and hurdle the headstones. Then all of a sudden the vampire’s down, brutally clothes-lined by the outstretched arm of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“You almost lost him, Spike.” She’s leaning on one hip, stake held loosely in her hand and the unfortunate fledgling at her feet. There’s no tension in her body and her expression is neutral, but still he’s acutely aware of how bad the terms on which they parted were.

“Good job you were here then, pet.” He doesn’t want to provoke her—doesn’t want to see her at all, truth be told. If he’d had any idea she’d be here, he’d have left this mission to Faith. Sure, Belrogs could be nasty buggers, but the rogue could’ve handled it, and he could have drifted on for another few years without having to face the memory of Buffy Summers.

Whatever answer she might have is cut off by the last-ditch attempt of their victim to save its sorry skin. It grapples her to the ground and she loses hold of her stake. “Urgh,” she calls out in annoyance as she struggles to keep its fangs away from her neck. “Spike. Get this thing off me.”

“Surely the mighty slayer doesn’t need my help.” Despite his resolve not to piss her off, he can’t help but needle her because she’s so much fun when she’s angry.

“Spike,” she growls, and he hauls the thing off her with a laugh and tosses it negligently against a crooked headstone. Then kicks up her stake so she can catch it and drive it through the vampire’s back in one graceful, seamless motion that doesn’t require her to look away from his face.

“Hello, Spike,” she says softly when she’s watched him for long weighted moments.

“Hello, Buffy.” His voice flows lightly over the skin of her bare shoulders on a gentle summer breeze, and she shivers. “It’s good to see you, pet. You look…” He pauses as if he didn’t think the sentence through before beginning, and now doesn’t know what to do with it. “Good,” he finishes lamely with a self-deprecating smile.

“Thanks.” Then she smiles and sighs at once, and it comes out as a little rush of air from her nose. “You too.” The reply is automatic, but then her forehead creases in the prettiest little show of thinking. “Actually, you look great,” she amends. “Really great.” Because he does. Sure, he looks the same—black on black denim and cotton—but his bleached hair is sculpted into that artful faux tousle she saw him wear now and then in Sunnydale, and the short black denim jacket that seems to have replaced his duster makes him look fashionable, and—although she’s so not noticing this—pretty well built.

His coy smile does nothing to detract from the rather appealing picture he makes, and she laughs a little, though she doesn’t know why. “You hunting?” she asks when she feels she has to say something, and he nods and looks around.

“Bloody rogue dragged me out,” he tells her, still scanning the cemetery for some sign of his companion. “Just ‘cos she’s a serial insomniac, I don’t get any sodding kip either.”

When he looks back there are clouds in the slayer’s eyes, though he can’t imagine why, and her smile is tight and false. “Well, I should head back anyway; it’s late.”

“I’ll walk you,” he offers, and prays he doesn’t sound too much like he’s offering to carry her books to school.

“But Faith-”

“Faith can look after herself; ‘sides, she’s usually busy after slaying.” He raises an eyebrow and gives her a pointed look as if she should understand some inference in his words. “Come on, pet.” He tips his head in the direction of home and grins playfully. “It’s dead out here.”

It’s impossible to be reticent in the face of a pun that bad, so she rolls her eyes and sets off for home at his side. “Lame, Spike,” she tells him with an unimpressed shake of her head, and he grins and shrugs and looks so pleased with himself that she can’t keep from laughing. “Lame.”

***

Angel blinks twice more at the blurred words of his presentation before admitting that he’s too tried to continue and pushing the papers away. It’s late. Must be almost two by now, and Buffy’ll be back soon from her patrol. Calmer, he hopes, and ready for bed.

He hears footsteps on the gravel and wonders if it’s her. Then her laughter rings out softly in the balmy night, musical and mysterious as a nightingale, and he smiles.

From the window he can see her strolling across the courtyard, slow enough that you could almost call it dawdling, and laughing brightly at her companion’s rumbling words. Then she’s speaking and gesturing energetically with her hands and Spike’s deep laughter harmonises with hers in the stillness of the night.

They’re almost directly beneath him when they stop awkwardly and turn to face each other. “Night then, Slayer.” Spike speaks quietly but not so softly that Angel can’t hear the words.

“Good night, Spike.” Buffy’s voice is just a fraction stronger and warm as the Californian summer they’ve left behind.

The vampire nods and moves to leave but her gentle voice stops him. “Spike.” He turns back to her, and Angel’s stomach erupts in sudden nerves that he can’t explain. “I, it, er… I hope you’ll stay long enough to see Dawn,” she says, although Angel gets the feeling it’s not what she’d intended. “She’ll be here in a couple of days, and she’d love to see you.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, luv.” And then he goes, and Buffy stands for a beat or two too long before she slips through the door.

Suddenly he’s less enthusiastic about welcoming her home than he was, so he strips quickly and flicks off the light. When she enters the room just moments after he’s slipped under the covers, he lies still and listens while she quietly prepares for bed and waits to see if she’ll try and wake him.

She doesn’t. She lies down on the other side of the bed and turns on her side without making any move to reach for him. He tells himself it’s consideration on her part, but in the darkness it feels like rejection.

 

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/152620.html